Congratulations to longtime Hotline favorite Aaron Rodgers, who has always been insightful with his answers and incredibly generous with his time whether he was playing for Cal, chatting courtside at Santa Clara basketball games or on the phone from the Packers’ practice facility.

Action: Arizona beats Cal in 3OT epic, or so they say.Reaction I: As Eammon Brennan wrote on espn.com’s national college basketball blog: “Arizona beat Cal in a triple-overtime classic … that most of the nation (and most of California, if the complaints on Twitter are any indication) didn’t get to see.”Reaction II: Cats grab control of the league race with their Bay Area sweep (one game lead on UCLA, two game lead on UW), which makes them the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.Reaction III: You have to admire the work Sean Miller has done with MoMo Jones. Only a former point guard could have gotten this much out of Jones, who had much to learn and refine when the season began, in just 1+ seasons.Reaction IV: I couldn’t help but think that, up one with 1:13 seconds left in the third overtime, Brandon Smith from 16 feet is not the shot Cal wants. Reaction V: Tough timing for the Bears: A draining loss, with three starters playing 50+ minutes, and Wednesday they leave town for the most arduous trip in the conference. Somehow, someway, they’ve got to come home from Seattle/Pullman with a split.Reaction VI: But goodness, Allen Crabbe is a stud. Assuming Derrick Williams and Klay Thompson leave school, Crabbe is the Hotline’s official favorite for the league’s 2012 POY award.

Action: Washington loses in Matt Knight Arena, swept on the Oregon Trail.Reaction I: The Huskies have now lost on the same campuses (Oregon and Oregon State) where San Jose State and Texas Southern won. That’s not good for UW and not good for the conference, which needs UW (and Arizona and UCLA) to finish as strong as possible.Reaction II: Combine the Huskies’ road woes with their lack of quality OOC wins, and I’d have to say they’re fast approach that darn bubble.

Action: Gonzaga loses at home to Memphis.Reaction I: The Zags’ chances for an at-large bid are just this side of zero, which means the WCC needs someone besides St. Mary’s to win the conference tournament in order to snare a second NCAA berth.Reaction II: Adding to Gonzaga’s resume problems: Several of the heavyweight opponents on the non-conference schedule (Kansas State, Baylor and Illinois) have turned into middleweight opponents.

Action: Stanford defeats ASU 83-74.Reaction I: The best game I’ve seen Jarrett Mann play, not only for his numbers (14 pts, 7 ast, 4 stls) but his decisions and aggressiveness in attacking the ASU zone. Between Mann, Josh Owens and Jeremy Green, Stanford got 53 points on 18 shots — the kind of efficiency coaches dream about.Reaction II: Stanford from the line: 25 of 34, or 73.5%. Much better.Reaction III: This was a big one to set a positive tone for the difficult home stretch, which features five of seven league games on the road.Reaction IV: And frankly, it’s not hard to envision Stanford losing all seven: The trip to Washington this week will be very difficult, as will the homestand against the L.A. schools and the finale in Berkeley; and the late-Feb. swing through Oregon looks much tougher now than it did a month ago. I don’t expect the Cardinal to lose ‘em all — and it will surely beat Seattle on 3/1 — but it wouldn’t be a total surprise. The veterans will have to be the difference makers, as they were Saturday.

Action: USF beats Santa Clara 68-62 on the Hilltop, takes sole possession of second place.Reaction I: Why don’t I pause here to let that sink in.Reaction II: Each time I watch the Dons, I think: These guys are the second-best team in the conference? But Rex Walters has his interesting collection of talent playing well together, getting better by the week — remember, the Dons lost to San Jose State, Montana State and Cal State-Bakersfield — and finding ways to win.Reaction III: I say “interesting collection of talent” because you’ve got two lightly-recruited sophomores from Southern California (Perris Blackwell and Michael Williams), a junior from talent-poor San Jose (Angelo Caloiaro), a transfer from Manhattan College (Rashad Green), a freshman from Croatia by way of Findlay Prep (Marko Petrovic), a senior from France by way of Sheridan College (Moustapha Diarra) and a freshman from Austin (Cody Doolin) — and Walters has made it work.Reaction IV: But the toughest portion of the league season awaits: St. Mary’s, then Portland and Gonzaga on the road. If the Dons can get one of the three, it’ll be a successful stretch.

Jon Wilner

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Hey, you could give Oregon a bit of credit too. They’re a much better team now than they were at the beginning of the season.

Rob

Wilner’s duck hate is laughable. Oregon murders a decent WSU team, who shot 29% (!), and then beat UW, who played one of their best games of the year.

Oh, and Wilner, do your homework. OSU beat Arizona at home as well.

J.

In Wilner’s last post he mentioned OSU’s win over Arizona. But what’s your point? That loss was a couple of months ago, and Arizona didn’t get swept on that trip.

Cal is surging right now. I wouldn’t be shocked to see them take down UW (with the way UW is playing) in UW. But, that Arizona game might have just taken too much out of them. I imagine Cal is envying the fact that Arizona doesn’t have to play again until Sunday (not to mention their depth).

Rob

Cal has been playing the underbelly of the pac10 lately, plus they caught Oregon right before Altman juggled the lineup, and they shot the lights out that day.

Looking at the rest of the schedule, I see the pac10 finishing this way:

AZ, UW, UCLA, UO, Cal, WSU, Stanford, USC, OSU, ASst

1959

Why the constant Stanford worst-case scenario, John? After the Cal win, it was all about how we had a great chance to lose our next 6 games (we didn’t, not even close). Now, you won’t be surprised if we lose our next seven. Seriously? Did you actually think about the implications of what you were saying?

Even if you give us just a 30% chance to win each game, there’s still only an 8% chance that we lose all seven conference games. That counts as surprising.

StanTheMan

Seriously Wilner. Stanford is one game behind the Weenies, with the exact same remaining conference schedule. Yet if I read your last month of blogs I’d think one team is on the NCAA bubble and the other one will be lucky to make the Insiders.com tournament for NIT wannabees.

Papa John

Your comments about UW have been spot on, JW, but you neglect to mention the catalyst for the Huskies’ slide: Abdul Gaddy’s season-ending injury. UW does not have the depth to withstand such a loss. Same goes for the rest of the Pac-10, for that matter.

As for Stanford, I had a chance to catch some of Saturday’s game versus ASU. Jarrett Mann and the free throw shooting improved, but there were still times when it looked like the Stanford players on the court had no clue what they were doing on offense. I suppose that some of that was due to ASU’s defense, but this was the second time that Stanford played ASU. I don’t expect Stanford to go 1-7 the rest of the way, but I would be surprised if they do better than 3-5.

John

Papa John commented on Washington losing Gaddy as their problem. He said, UW doesn’t have the depth to withstand such a loss. Same goes for the rest of the PAC10, for that matter. Papa, I have to disagree, Arizona lost Gaddy to Washington a couple of years ago, and somehow have rebounded fine. If they lost MoMo right now, Jordin Mayes would step in. Arizona has more than enough depth, unlike the other Pac10 teams you seem to be watching.

The Wisdom Cow

I love how Monty gets kids to play, but I was pulling my nose hairs out over how he managed the end of regulation and the first 2 OTs. Twice with 3 point leads and seconds left, the D played zone way too soft. That MSF actually fouled Mo Mo instead of just giving him the 2 left me speechless (after a scream that registered on the Richter scale). You take the bad with the good, but I really have not been impressed with Monty’s crunch time situational coaching.

Coach Jim Harbaugh

For coaching know-how in the Bay Area there’s two guys I’d listen to, Bochy and Monty.